


Anima(lity)

by UrbanAmazon



Category: Underworld - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-31
Updated: 2010-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-14 06:54:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrbanAmazon/pseuds/UrbanAmazon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fight, flight, and ... what's the third one again? Michael angsts over instincts that are beyond his immortal control and broods for the loss of his inner puppy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anima(lity)

**Author's Note:**

> anima \'an-eh-muh\ n [NL, fr. L, soul] (1923): an individual's true inner self that in the analytic psychology of C.G. Jung reflects archetypal ideals of conduct.
> 
> animality \'an-eh-'mal-eht-ee\ n (1615): 1: qualities associated with animals: a: VITALITY b: a natural unrestrained unreasoned response to physical drives or stimuli 2: the animal nature of human beings.

He'd taken her, once, as the beast (and it was taking because he didn't ask like he would have he didn't give her flowers and touch her gently he just took)

It scared him, more than a little. He just couldn't decide which part scared him most; the fact that he'd done it at all (it was easy so easy he was strong and she was his and that made it right) or the fact that Selene had let him, and then let it drop, going on in her wordless way as he followed like a lost puppy at her heels.

If he dwelled on it too long with his lingering human-sense of shame, he would worry at it like a bone, sucking at the marrow of his memories as if it would sustain him, as if condemnation was preferred to indulging in a sin. There were memories of the times shortly after the change, the upheaval, of the two of them fleeing from kith and kin in kind. Memories of hotel rooms and forgotten safehouses, where the two of them would sleep with the sun and rise to run again come dusk. Memories of waking in cold, alien beds to find himself clutching at her like a child from a nightmare, catching her hands as they carefully stroked his sweaty hair in an awkward attempt to be soothing. She would kiss his brow like a mother would (and she was his mother in a way in some far off way) and he would spend the rest of the day awake and holding her until the sun set, his heart beating for them both.

He was (had been) a doctor; he knew about the biological impulses that fled headlong through a brain that was terrified of impending death. He remembered the eloquence with which his classmates had dubbed it in pre- med. Fight, flight, or fuck.

At first, it was only flying. South, out of Hungary, then east, through India, and south again. Hotels and run-down houses when they could find them, sewer corners when they could not. She'd been tired and running on adrenaline fumes, scrambling for time and space to regroup from the loss of everything she had believed for the last few centuries. He'd been terrified and paranoid of every dark shadow, learning hard and fast his new world. They ran, they slept, then ran again.

Then there was the night in Laos, when the comforting hands had reached for him instead, when she had been the one waking with terror in her eyes and screams dying in her head. He'd been the one who stroked her tangled hair as she wept wide-eyed into his chest. His kiss was meant for her clammy brow, but crept lower, and flight was suddenly lower in priority for their immortal instincts. When the air in the room was done eddying and rippling in the wake of their sex, they were warriors again. They tempered the silver that was their fear into steel, and they stopped running.

Now, fight and fuck jostled for dominance. They began the journey back west, seeking out Marcus' new Death Dealers and sending them back in pieces. By night, they were soldiers, immortals, but by day they buried themselves into one another with all the desperation of those who knew that soldiers were expendable. Human.

The two lines had never crossed ... until ... until ...

Sri Lanka. Kahn himself had come calling.

Oh, how they had raged over the rooftops. The rain had painted them slick and slippery under the night sky, thunder drowning out the sound of gunfire and scrambling every sense of man and beast. Michael had welcomed the change in his bones, the shift in skin and soul that came so fluidly now, howling his bloodlust to the sky (and he was whole again he was perfect again he would tear these pathetic leeches in two for threatening Selene his Selene my Selene)

Kahn was (had been) good. Had Michael been only half of himself, Kahn would have won. As it were, Kahn and Michael had never met, and the leader of the Death Dealers had never witnessed the brutal perfection of a vampire and werewolf in the same body. Lucian would have been proud. The look on Kahn's face as Michael took half a clip to the chest without backing down (it itched it hurt a little but it was nothing he was perfect) was as primal a satisfaction he had ever felt (swiped at his chest tore it open with one hand dug a fist into his gut and pulled and held him up with one hand and tore his jaw from his face before he could scream and ripped his throat out with his teeth like Kahn would have done to remind him that I'm vampire too you murderous soulless fuck)

Kahn had died quick.

As the rain turned the blood to mist on the rooftop (others mostly others Kahn's was all over his face he could smell it and a bit of his own and Selene's) he found Selene staring at the corpses of the Death Dealers at her feet, her face as impassive as it always had been despite the icy blue that still ringed her eyes and the tremor in her trigger fingers. She was bleeding, her lower lip split and her chin bruised (how dare they how fucking dare they touch her I'll kill them) and he smelled the graze of a bullet near her knee.

Michael had known love before this life. He'd known lust and loyalty and passion, but only in this moment of impulse and flaring adrenaline did he truly understand the gut-wrenching power of (possession) and (need now need her now we won we beat them I won mine she is mine)

He was on her like an attacker, pinning her arms to her sides with one dark arm as he crushed his lips to hers with enough force to bruise again, his teeth finding her bloodied lip and drinking from it like a suckling child (blood from my blood of your blood you made me you tasted me I taste you back you're mine) One hand tangled itself in her hair and stayed there, bending her neck to let him savage her mouth, and the other dragged its heavy claws down the line of her spine, catching on liquid clothing and shredding it down, leaving milk-white skin marred with red grooves. His weight was greater (stronger than both and faster and perfect) and he staggered her against the brick wall of the roof access, caging her in with his body tight on her own.

His teeth, still thick and sharp as a lycan, had torn her mouth worse than before, and his tongue sought the taste like holy water, damning breath.

Far away in his mind, where the shame didn't burn so great, he liked to remember that she had been kissing back (fighting but not fighting not pushing away) her fangs clashing against his own like the parry of blades and grazing his tongue until his mouth was flooded with blood, intoxicating and streaking down his chin to drip into the bloody water at their feet. Her own hands clawed at the midnight-blue skin of his back (touch me mark me I am yours and you belong to me) leaving welts that burned like a pleasurable lash, yet would heal in minutes. He felt his breath shudder and shake in the chasms of his lungs, emerging as a rattling snarl as he reached again for her mouth, as he saw her eyes, still ice-blue and vampire- souled (we are not human this is the way we are we are meant take her the blood and the lust its all the same take her)

And the human part of him, the Michael part, had been both screaming and struck silent with shock and unavoidable carnality (what the fuck am I doing oh God of fuck this isn't right it's not me it's that damned beast and Selene stop me I feel oh God! Selene make me stop while I still can I'm human we're human stop me stop me I can't stop me I want you I need you)

If her eyes had been dark, had been human, the Michael part might have won.

When he changed into the hybrid beast that he had become, when his skin turned blue-black-silver and his hands grew talons and his fangs ached when he howled to the sky (when he could smell every cell of blood around him and hear every heartbeat beckoning and how he wanted to run with the wind and feel this power this utter power for the rest of his days) the human face and the human mind that still answered to the name of Michael retreated to a place where no blood could touch him as it was spattered on walls in bloody arcs. The shy, gentle consciousness that had felt like a schoolboy in a crush when he first saw Selene in that subway months before, it detached itself from the beast and observed numbly, as if in a dream. No longer was he terrified of the things the beast (he) did (could do), but he liked to think that man and beast were separated.

No longer. He realized now that man and beast were one and the same (oh God help me I want this I want you like this Selene) the same blood in the same veins in the same body, and it was as irreversible and inescapable as death itself.

Their clothes were already soaked in the rain and tore messily (take her) leaving irretrievable shreds and baring their skin one pale sliver at a time. He scratched her accidentally in his rush to see her bare (take her) to claim that pale slip of a body that she kept hidden away beneath corsets and black cloth. Now and then his mouth would break away from hers to bury his face in the porcelain curve of her neck, inhaling heady draughts of her smoky shadow scent (oh take her she is mine for me) drinking the warm rain from her cold skin. Her back was nearly bare now, so he flattened a hand against her spine, sandwiched hard between skin and the rough brick of the wall, feeling the friction burn in his nerves as he stroked the ridges of her vertebrae and ribs, knowing the name of each one by touch, seeing the deceptive frailty of her skeleton in his mind's eye.

Things blurred in the rain, moments running together like the storm, and then they were on their knees together in on the hard asphalt of the roof, naked and burning under the rain. Her teeth had found his neck once more, remembering how the same kiss of death had given him life so long ago, and the metallic tang of blood was so strong in his senses that Michael knew nothing else. He was hard and straining like a bowstring under her fingers (oh god Selene please take me let me take you) and suddenly there was no space between them any more. His nerves convulsed in the intensity of the sensation () and his body followed suit, a shuddering thrust that made them both hiss into each other's lips. His hands were at her waist, clenching tight enough to bruise with the frightening strength that strained under his skin, and her own fingers dug alternately into the hard muscles of his back and the vulnerable skin of his scalp, tightening in time with every buck and motion. They found a rhythm, sharp and jerky and hard (and oh god I can't stop now I can never stop forgive me Selene please don't stop)

Michael liked to think that they made love, in those days spent tangled in the sheets of a stranger's bed. As human as they pretended to be, it would be more than sex, more than a reaction to life and death situation. They loved each other ... he knew he loved Selene, even though she would probably never say it in so many words.

This wasn't making love. This was fucking; hard and brutal and fast, with as much humanity as they offered on the battlefield.

And as he panted in ragged snarls against her neck, he could feel the faintest of scars there, where a vampire's teeth had marked her (someone had taken her marked her before how fucking dare they she's mine she's mine) and the beast in him knew who had dared. Viktor. The lying bastard Elder that had murdered Selene's family and taken her life as a false gift, shaping her into a slave. The scar was the mark of her vampiric birth.

(You're dead now Viktor we killed you she killed you and she's yours no more she's mine and you have no right to have a mark on her she's mine)

Michael's hybrid teeth were heavier and larger than Viktor's and his bite encompassed that of the vampire, tearing it out. He felt the cry of shock reverberate in Selene's throat, and his mouth clamped down hard on the wound, sucking it clean and feeling it start to heal under his tongue (you're mine I marked you you're mine all mine and I will kill whoever tries to take you away)

And that last shudder was all that it took, and the beast roared to the sky like the thunder that shook the air.

They'd held each other for what seemed like hours, the rain washing them clean, washing him clean as the hybrid-blue tinge of his skin faded away. Michael didn't dare speak, growing more horrified with every passing breath. It had been Selene who had finally broke the silence, saying that dawn was coming and they needed to get those bullets out of his chest.

And now he stood sentinel at the window of their hotel, the sunlight faintly warm on his skin as he watched the world below. Selene slept on the bed behind him, and he could see her reflection on the glass.

The guilt he felt nagged at him, and he let it. He'd long passed the point of wondering why he did it, settling now for the fact that he was afraid to ever again look Selene in the eye, for fear that she'd see only the hybrid abomination she had created, and not the man that loved her deeply.

It didn't help that his eyes refused to turn back to their human shade. They were always black now, utterly bottomless black pools of darkness that heralded the mixed immortal blood that was his legacy. His birthright. Damn Alexander Corvinus and his fucking immortal genes.

He left the window, unable to stand the reflections that were stronger than the view.

The rain had already cleaned him, but he headed for the shower anyways, avoiding his own accusing black-hole gaze in the mirror and turning the water as hot as the plumbing allowed. He didn't know how long he stood there, letting the water scald him in a deafening torrent, trying to burn the shame from his skin and yet never letting go of it in his mind. He saw her every time he closed his eyes, felt his fingers twitch for her, curl for her as he remembered her skin, felt the beast uncoil lazily and start to demand more.

Selene's feather-light touch nearly jumped him out of his skin. She stood beside the shower, wrapped in a flimsy sheet from the bed with that constant cool stone mask upon her face. She didn't say a word, but Michael knew she knew. Even now, he had to stop his hands from drifting towards her.

Water dripped from his hair, down his face, painting rivulets on skin that had turned faintly dusky. "It ... it scared me."

Selene let the bed sheet fall and stepped into the shower with him, wrapping herself close. "I know."

Michael held her so tightly that his arms shook. He tried not to feel the welt on her neck that would become a scar, his mark on her, tried not to see the faint red lines that he had left on her back. "What am I now?" he whispered, more to himself than Selene. "Should I even bother in trying to stay human anymore? I'm not lycan and I'm not vampire and I'm not a man so what am I?" Then, so soft than the water nearly drowned it, "Why don't you hate what I am?"

"Because I would have to hate myself if I did. And I have stopped believing in regret."

"You don't ..."

"No." Cool fingers worked their way to his neck, where Selene's own mark upon him was forever embedded into his memory. "I don't." Then she looked up into his tense face, a question in her dark eyes. "Do you regret what I did fo- ... did to you?"

He remembered the feeling of silver nitrate eating at his veins like molten barbs, the feeling of panic as his lungs refused to give breath, no matter how hard he strained for air to scream with. He remembered dying, and the last thing he saw would have been Selene's helpless and desperate face, until she had brought him over with her teeth on his throat. "No. Never." He hid his face in her dark mane of hair and held her all the closer. "Will it happen again?"

"Probably." Her hand gently traced the curve of his neck, his ear, his trembling jaw. "You can't hurt me. You know that."

"I know, but ... I ... I'm sorry."

"No more than I. We swore we'd stop running, remember?"

They stayed that way until sundown, afraid and together, and as he whispered words of love into her silent skin, Michael wondered who he'd been trying to convince. To confess to.

No regrets. He held on to that.


End file.
